[PFS][PBP Gameday VI] 7-99: Through Maelstrom Rift (Standard) (Inactive)

Game Master Silbeg

Ember was born into a thriving swarm of pyraustas in the skies above an active volcano. In one of Ember’s earliest memories, the swarm greeted a spectacular eruption with dancing and celebration until the sheer force caused the volcano to collapse in on itself. This deep crater brought with it uncertainty — fearing the volcano may never erupt again, the pyraustas lost interest in it. Pyraustas lack the luxury of longevity shared by most of their draconic kin, so they sought out a new home. Instead of settling down atop the next volcano they could find, they took the opportunity to explore, so Ember’s life was full of travel and adventure. She loved telling stories to dramatize her swarm’s experiences, and as she refined her skills, she yearned to spread her tales to a wider audience. Ember quickly realized that to connect with others who did not share her experiences, she needed to broaden her own horizons. She left her swarm behind and struck off on her own with their support.

Ember is whimsical, optimistic, and good natured. She feels most alive among companions who are embarking on a new journey with her. As she approaches her middle years, the desire to make a name for herself has only grown. While she never hesitates to share credit where credit is due and focuses her efforts on supporting her allies, she also does not hesitate to extol her own role in helping them achieve greatness.

Hailing from the deserts of Qadira, Jamila al-Shafah has always felt a close connection to that land and its people. She has lived many human lifetimes in the guise of a Qadiran person, most frequently as a prosperous merchant. She finds great satisfaction in constructing these human lives and in immersing herself in the passions and whims of mortal existence.

In her most recent human identity, she ran a caravan along the Silken Way and maintained a decades-long relationship with a human man named Targos Min-Katheer, whom she accompanied as an ally and at times as a lover. When Targos died, Jamila was surprised at how intensely she felt his loss. In his absence, her life in Qadira had lost its luster.

In this time of uncertainty, she decided to rekindle an old business relationship that she had neglected for centuries: her membership in the Concordance of Elements. Although Jamila had initially enjoyed working for the Concordance, a growing rivalry with a particularly ambitious and vindictive ifrit named Tamarej made her work environment increasingly inhospitable. The day that Tamarej was promoted to be the official Liaison of the Seat of Fire, the ordained messenger for a member of the Concordance’s ruling body, Jamila assumed a human guise and began a new life in Qadira. When she returned to the Concordance, Jamila discovered that Tamarej was no longer a member of the organization, though no one seems willing to share the reason for his disappearance. Regardless of the cause, she is eager to begin work for the Concordance again. To keep the memory of her last human life alive, she travels with an intelligent bird from the Plane of Air that she has named Targos.

Krakos is a devoted — albeit more moderate — worshiper of Ayrzul, the enigmatic elemental lord of earth. Instead of fighting against the forces of Ayrzul’s hated foe Ymeri, elemental lord of fire, Krakos occasionally works together with the forces of air, fire, and water in conjunction with the Concordance of Elements. The oread sees no contradiction between his faith and his role in the Concordance, instead believing that maintaining the balance of power among the elements is in his patron’s best interests—after all, earth moves slowly, and any sudden imbalance is unlikely to favor his patron. The fact that quite a few within Ayrzul’s faith consider Krakos’s actions to be heretical only serves to encourage him to spend more time away from them while putting his philosophy into practice. He believes that gathering information and formulating a plan before acting is the wisest course of action. Krakos is loyal to his companions and unyielding in the pursuit of his goals.

Intellectually, the mephit Aurathius has never been the sharpest coral on the reef, yet he has always enjoyed a stronger mastery of water than his peers and an uncanny knack for tricking others. In comparison, his cousin Octaris is an arcane genius—or as Aurathius sees him, an arrogant, stuffy academic who spends too much time fiddling with his spellbooks and not enough time enjoying the opportunities he has in life. It is fitting, then, that Aurathius chose to seize some of these opportunities for himself by assuming his pompous cousin’s identity and showing up in his place; the statistics above reference Octaris, but this is truly Aurathius in disguise. In place of a true familiar, Aurathius can manifest an aqueous octopus by sheer force of will. Rather than cast spells, he relies on his occult mastery of water, a bag full of wands, and enough bluster to fake true arcane power.

Aurathius is an eternal prankster, constantly amusing himself by tricking the gullible and bringing more humor to everyone’s lives. He believes that most rules are crutches built by dull, uninspired individuals to allow them to make decisions mindlessly. He may not be a member of the Concordance yet, but the idea of proving himself first and earning membership in the field sounds appealing. At the very least, a Concordance mission promises to test his skills at improvisational magic and disguise.

Rhyol spent her early years in the expansive lava fields that dot the border between the Planes of Earth and Fire. Although thoqquas have a reputation for being irascible, Rhyol’s propensity for bouts of rage was notable even among her kind. Also notable was her considerable strength, which she used to carve out a sizable territory for herself. As she swam and burrowed through her volcanic domain, she came across a chunk of pale green metal that caught the light of the flames like a piece of crystal. When she took a bite of the metal, she was struck both by its unusual flavor and a sudden, odd sense of longing. She was determined to understand what this green substance was and why it could influence her mind, so she wrapped the end of her tail around it and set off to find the only type of creature she could think of that might be able to help her solve this maddening mystery: a mephit. Fire mephits, Rhyol knew, were weak, but they also gathered together in large numbers and shared knowledge. Most importantly, very few creatures other than mephits seemed to be able to understand thoqquas at all.

Finding a fire mephit willing to help her was a straightforward task, but unraveling the nature of the metal proved far more challenging than she expected. The sample passed from scholar to scholar, each of which had no record of its existence. She learned that the metal was highly resistant to magic, rebuffing most attempts at examination. In time, her mephit allies became friends, and the young thoqqua learned ways to take out her rage that did not involve violence. She also developed a curiosity about the fire mephit’s numerous cultural customs, taboos, and rituals, which to her seemed entirely pointless. As her sense of wonder and bewilderment grew, she sought out a way to communicate more effectively. With painstaking trial and error — and the occasional destructive rampage to vent frustration — she developed enough control over the sounds that steam made when it hissed through her plated hide to form intelligible words. It was this breakthrough that caught the attention of a member of the Concordance, who offered her membership on the spot. Rhyol accepted the offer, and has never looked back.

The only portion of his past that Zephyr of the Forgotten Sun is willing to share is that everything he once knew was consumed in flames. Zephyr hails from Ethrania, a planet far from Golarion that was lost in a great cataclysm. He was traveling through the Plane of Air on business for the Concordance when disaster struck. When his attempts to return home failed, he sought answers in divination magic, which taught him pieces of the horrifying truth behind the planet’s destruction. Only the occasional phrase or curse in Ethranian stand as a testament to the lost world, which Zephyr endeavors every day to put behind him. Zephyr values living in the present moment, and dedicates himself to an obsessive degree to the cause of elemental balance. In his view, an elemental imbalance was responsible for the all-consuming inferno that destroyed his home. This tragedy is not the only event that Zephyr blames on elemental imbalance—in fact, his penchant for blaming so many ills on this one central cause leads some members of the Concordance to dismiss his insights. No one in the Concordance knows how many of his instincts in this matter will, in time, be proven correct. He vacillates between pensive and flighty, at times appearing to be both at once. Regardless of how distracted he may seem, he is always aware of the world around him.